John's Poetry Collection
Time Remembers
As we look back we see ripples:
The stone itself is gone. No evidence is left
That she was there at all
But for the small waves, ever expanding,
Growing distant over the small pool.
Does time flow differently in the past?
The stone is
Old
Gone
Forgotten.
Time is marked by our passage:
Our lives flow across its canvas
As oil paint rolls quickly over rough paper
In complexities that words fail to
Explain.
Years later, the same puddle is found.
The rain pummels into the water,
Stirring up secrets in the sand below.
Silt swirls, almost completely obscuring the bottom.
Through the murk falls a pebble,
Lodging beneath the shady water
A short while from the first stone.
Time remembers,
And so must we.
We look to the past to see what happened.
What was happening.
What occurred.
We seek the mysteries.
John R., February 24th 2020
Dusting the Bricks of Time
A quill breaks through the surface of ink,
Like a stone, half dipped into shadow.
The unknown is called back.
Our fingers trace the bricks of the past.
The edges rough from years of wear.
They are filled with an unquenched coldness,
Covered in a layer of dust.
A promise
Forgotten.
Wrongs
Forgotten.
What else?
The feather races through the air,
Stirring up the old
As it swirls in its frenzy.
Records merge into a song,
Sad, but full of truth,
And promise,
And failure.
Our silence for years has frayed the edges of the page.
Yet there remains hope, somewhere
Between the threads of existence and silence.
Truth.
Redemption.
A moon, defined by purpose, sails the sky.
Significance relies on who is looking, listening,
Caring.
I am a speck in the eye of chaos,
Alive with the hope that
Knowing the unknown is
Possible,
Essential.
The letters flow out,
Across the pacific moonlight,
Through the doors of time.
Our forgotten are to be remembered.
They are eternal in time and history; but only
If there is history.
I pick up a pen:
An unending journey
Rises from the resting dust.
John R., February 24th 2020
Remember the Trees, Rooted in Time, the Soil
The start:
Earth nourishes us and in turn,
We give it our memories,
Our lives spent spiraling across its surface
Before returning to the ground.
The trees:
Wise beyond our years,
They read time,
Glide through it steadily,
Their roots store knowledge.
Shared knowledge,
Should we listen.
We share in delight of knowing,
But also the horror.
To be a historian is to
Look through time.
At time. In time,
We all learn
How little we understand.
We are never alone, not really.
Comprehension takes root.
When tragedy occurs,
Nature rises with us.
John R., February 24th 2020
Author Statement
My intention with this writing is to instill in the reader that it is necessary that we come to terms with our history. The strategy I employed to do this is composed of the feelings and thoughts that I had researching Lettuce. Through this, I was able to stick to the facts and also make the writing worthwhile at the same time. I feel that the more we learn about Lettuce, the more questions we have and have emphasized this in my writing. It is my hope that when this writing is read, the readers are able to see hidden knowledge throughout it that I may have not noticed. The first style of writing I attempted was an essay; however, I kept flowing back into a more poem-like structure. Finally, I succumbed to the tide and wrote a poem. The pure joy of expressing my thoughts with such ease was enough to motivate me to write another two. When the poem assignment went out, I was ecstatic to have an excuse to write poetry!
